Space explorer makes fiery final dive into Saturn

Science team members Jo Pitesky (left), Scott Edgington and Nora Alonge embrace at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena after signals from the spacecraft Cassini ended.

Science team members Jo Pitesky (left), Scott Edgington and Nora Alonge embrace at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena after signals from the spacecraft Cassini ended.

Photo: ROBYN BECK, AFP/Getty Images

Photo: ROBYN BECK, AFP/Getty Images

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Science team members Jo Pitesky (left), Scott Edgington and Nora Alonge embrace at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena after signals from the spacecraft Cassini ended.

Science team members Jo Pitesky (left), Scott Edgington and Nora Alonge embrace at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena after signals from the spacecraft Cassini ended.

Photo: ROBYN BECK, AFP/Getty Images

Space explorer makes fiery final dive into Saturn

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CAPE CANAVERAL — NASA’s Cassini spacecraft disintegrated in the skies above Saturn on Friday in a final, fateful blaze of cosmic glory, after a remarkable journey of 20 years.

Confirmation of Cassini’s expected demise came about 7:55 a.m. EDT when radio signals from the spacecraft — its last scientific gifts to Earth — came to an abrupt halt. The radio waves went flat, and the spacecraft fell silent.

Cassini actually burned up like a meteor 83 minutes earlier as it dove through Saturn’s atmosphere, becoming one with the giant gas planet it set out in 1997 to explore. But it took that long for the news to reach Earth a billion miles away.

The only spacecraft to ever orbit Saturn, Cassini showed us the planet, its rings and moons up close in all their splendor. Perhaps most tantalizing, ocean worlds were unveiled on the moons Enceladus and Titan, which could possibly harbor life.

Dutiful to the end, the Cassini snapped its last photos Thursday and sampled Saturn’s atmosphere Friday morning as it made its final plunge. It was over in a minute or two.

Program manager Earl Maize made the official pronouncement:

“This has been an incredible mission, an incredible spacecraft and you’re all an incredible team,” Maize said. “I’m going to call this the end of mission.”

Flight controllers wearing matching purple shirts stood and embraced and shook hands. Project scientist Linda Spilker also had a purple handkerchief to wipe away tears. “It felt so much like losing a friend,” she said.

Cassini departed Earth in 1997 and arrived at the sixth planet from our sun in 2004. The hitchhiking European Huygens landed on big moon Titan in 2005. Nothing from Earth has landed farther. Three other spacecraft previously flew past Saturn, but Cassini was the only one to actually circle the planet.